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Home ed

Find advice from other parents on our Homeschool forum. You may also find our round up of the best online learning resources useful.

To be known or not by the LEA?

18 replies

BeNimble · 18/01/2007 11:37

Hello Home Educators!
My boy will be school age and could go from September 08 but I'm almost certain that I won't send him. I'm wondering if to inform the LEA of my intention. I know I don't have to.
There doesn't seem to be a very active home ed community in our area, though I've met a few within the same LEA ? they haven't had terrible experiences with the LEA but some were know already because they took their children out of schools.
Am I best to just continue regardless ? or make contact with them? Do they tend to be better to deal with if you approach them first?
Thanks.

OP posts:
Julienoshoes · 18/01/2007 13:05

I live in an area where the Home Ed Laison Officer doesn't give home educators a hard time. Our children came out of school so we are known. However if we hadn't sent them to school, I wouldn't have contacted the LEA-why would we? There is nothing they can give me that I can't get from the HE community, either locally or online.
I along with a couple of other parents locally are meeting with the LEA to help them improve their written policies, which don't reflect what is actually said by the LEA in person. We are in a position where we are giving the LEA information. They are asking us for advice and information.

I don't think it makes a difference how they treat you when/if you are found. LEAs are either reasonable to home educators or not IMHO.

However all of this may change very soon if the present "light touch" changes to monitoring of home education wanted by the Dfes become reality. Also if childrens data bases all become linked up and information is shared between agencies home ed familes will be found then.

But again if it were me I wouldn't tell the LEA until I had to.

Heartmum2Jamie · 18/01/2007 14:02

If your son has never been registered or had his name down for a school, I wouldn't bother telling them. I am known by our LEA as we also took our son out of school and I have yet to see exactly how they will be, but all correspondance has been fine so far and the main bloke sounds friendly enough. I will have a better idea when his respresentative calls t make an appt.

pinkdolly · 22/01/2007 12:01

Hiya, my girls are 4, 3 and 6 months. And i have no intention to tell the LEA. I see no reason they should know, to be honest.

In my opinion, its like phoning up the social services and saying, I have a child do you want to come and check that i'm doing a good job taking care of him/her?
Hope that helps.

Pink

hana · 22/01/2007 12:04

shouldn't you be working in partnership? if you're home edding, then woulnd't you nee dsuppor from the lea? seems like you're being negative about the lea before you've even started

juuule · 22/01/2007 13:10

Why would you need support from the LEA?

hana · 22/01/2007 14:00

days out
curriculum
ideas
resources

no man is an island sort of thing

juuule · 22/01/2007 14:06

It's possible to do all the things you listed either individually, with friends or through home-ed groups. No need for the LEA for those.
However, it would be nice if the LEA could pay for the exams that home-ed children take just as they do for children in school. It is unlikely that they would do this, so apart from that I don't see what else I could need them for.
'no man is an island'. Quite right. Which is why home-educators are out and about in the community finding out what's going on where, plus meeting at groups to arrange things together.

Saturn74 · 22/01/2007 14:10

We're known to the LEA as we took our children out of school.
The LEA have never provided anything since we have been home educating.

No days out
No curriculum
No ideas
No resources

They've given us nothing, and spent not a single penny.

So I suppose it is lucky that we want and need nothing from them.
Because that is what we get.

(Which is unsurprising, as they were perfectly useless when my children were in school, too!)

hana · 22/01/2007 14:12

oh
of course I can see strng knit organization of home educators, but maybe in an ideal world and all that

do the lea see hoem edders as a threat?

Runnerbean · 22/01/2007 15:35

What support would I need from the LEA?
I have a large support network nationwide of other home edders, as well as lots of local ones too.
I have all the resources I need from the internet, the library and yes the outside world is an amazing source of educational material!!

Do my children need to be assessed?

Well my dd who is 7 is steadily working through some KS3 maths and english.

The LEA 's don't offer any financial support.

I don't think there are enough of us to 'threaten' LEA s. BUT that number is growing rapidly so who knows........

Heartmum2Jamie · 22/01/2007 17:39

Have to add my 2 cents here, having been "inspected" by the LEA on Friday. We also got nothing from the woman who came to see us, no days out, no curriculum, no resources and no ideas. It is a god thing I was not relying on them to offer practical support as I would have been sorely disappointed. I too get all the help I need from this board, other boards like it and our local home ed group.

Heartmum2Jamie · 22/01/2007 17:39

Opps, meant GOOD, not god

BeNimble · 24/01/2007 18:00

that's the reason why i'm posting on here hana ? to see what sort of dealings other folks have had with their lea. i can't become unknown once i've contacted them.
i already know the 'days out, curriculum, ideas, resources' stuff is for us to sort/source, and i don't want my children assessing, certainly not for many years!

OP posts:
Jennylee · 25/01/2007 01:31

To any and all in west lothian thinking of doing it , unless you have to ask permission and need to be known for legal reasons, like you child is already enrolled at school in the area etc, do not make youself known it is a pita and they are bullying and obstructive, if you are not known keep it that way , save yourself a whole load of hassle, although I hear that the lea in Fife is wonderfull supportive and helpful (a good thing about fife) so it is not all lea's

Scottish perspective just in case lol

Jennylee · 25/01/2007 01:35

days out
curriculum
ideas
resources

they don't do that they do not help you in any way, so that is not really a reason.

don't contact the lea better off finding other home edders and they know about all of the above or you can arrange things as groups if you like or not lol

Also many do not use the curriculum

terramum · 25/01/2007 16:04

Its nice if you have a person dealing with you who doesnt hassle you, knows the law & what they can/cant do as well as being helpful sources of info....but not everyone at the LA will be like this & your nice person might well get promoted/move & you are left with the jobsworth who makes like very difficult for you. Ive read far too many horror stories & so I personally wont be going out of my way to make ourselves known to our LA. It does make me slightly nervous about mentioning it to the HV or GP etc (not that we have seen either in the last 6-12 months), especially with the new info sharing stuff coming out atm....but at the same time we are proud to have chosen to HE DS & dont want to feel (or make DS feel) that we are hiding from the authorities so would be open if asked (& it was relevant)

Fillyjonk · 27/01/2007 11:58

am telling them

have dealt quite a bit with local SS and LEA and so on professionally and have found things all much smoother and easier if you are upfront about things.

Also it will give me confidence to make the first move. I mean, officials do know already-HV and so forth. And some of my neighbours I think might inform them. I just don't want to be caught on the hop really. Otherwise I know they will call while I am juggling kids or something...or turn up on my doorstep when I am in the middle of a flaming row with dp or something.

My HV has already helpfully informed them of our existence. (I know this as she spells our name in a very odd way...and so, strangely, do all the letters from the LEA...

my strategy is to write a long detailed letter in impeccable English to show them that we are not weirdos locking our kids under the stairs to produce piecework. They can come round at a mutually agreeable time. Any pissing about and they will get the full force of my and dp's legal trainings.

And hopefully they will then naff off and leave us alone. Hopefully...

Mehetabel · 04/02/2007 21:02

I had visits from the LEA for the first 10 years we home educated, and tbh they were a boring waste of time. The LEA can only see education in school terms. They simply cannot see that a child can be learning and not producing school type work, and yet how many of us in the real world choose to write an essay on our visit to the farm, or make a graph of the different coloured cars that go past our houses, so why should children feel any differently? The visit to the farm is enough in itself. The cars can be noticed without having to do a cake graph, bar graph etc. If the child gets enough interest in a project to do these things for their own interest fair enough, but if not then why should they? So the LEA just cannot understand this. They could not understand how my son could have dreadfully immature handwriting at 11, how he could not know how to set a sum out on a page. They did not realise that he had had poetry published that he had written on the word processor, or that he was working out complex maths problems in his head from age 4.

After he got his first college credits at age 12, and his first gcse age 13, they decided that we knew what we were doing and for the last few years they have left us alone, and have never met my daughter - a state much to be preferred as it was a pain having to try to make our learning method fit into their view of how the world should be. The trouble with having them visit is that they feel they know more about our children than we do, and they feel they have more idea what a child should be doing than the child does. They know nothing of autonomous education or the great outcomes being recorded by home educators who have dared to let their children lead the way with their learning. My son still has immature handwriting, but if he ever wanted to change that, he knows he could get a book on caligraphy and work hard on it for a week or two. Half way through his first year of his PHD, he still hasn't found it enough of a problem to bother to correct it. If the LEA had had their way and got him sitting at a desk every day doing handwriting when he was younger, instead of being able to pursue his own vital interests, he may have a clearer handwriting style, but I doubt his self motivation, sense of exploration, delight in experimentation and inner drive would have survived it.

This is why I would never disclose myself to the LEA, they do not understand home education and they think they have rights to monitor, assess and prescribe the education that they just do not have in law.

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